Secular blogger killed in Bangladesh; fourth this year

Assailants believed to be Islamist militants entered an apartment building posing as potential tenants and killed a secular blogger in Bangladesh's capital on Friday, in the fourth such deadly attack this year, police said.

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Assailants believed to be Islamist militants entered an apartment building posing as potential tenants and killed a secular blogger in Bangladesh's capital on Friday, in the fourth such deadly attack this year, police said.

Police official Mustafizur Rahman said 40-year-old Niloy Chowdhury was hacked to death in his apartment. The motive was not immediately clear and no one claimed responsibility for the death.

Chowdhury's friends said he was a secular blogger and had a Facebook account with the name "Niloy Neel" in which he criticized radical Islamists at home and abroad.

The killing is the fourth of a secular blogger since February, when a Bangladeshi-American man who was also critical of Islam, Avijit Roy, was hacked to death on the Dhaka University campus while walking with his wife.

Two others were attacked and killed in March and May, one in Dhaka and another in the northeastern city of Sylhet.

Detectives say radical groups were behind the previous attacks and have made some arrests, but have failed to make any major headway into the killings.